Jihadists strike Britain – Again.

Another day, another terrorist attack, and the familiar narrative continues.

Listening to the news coverage Saturday evening there was a constant repetitive litany.

Why does this keep happening? What can we do to protect ourselves? Is it coming to the U.S.? Why did Britain lower the terror threat? Who were the attackers? Blah, blah, and blah.

Every law enforcement and terrorism fighting agency in the world knows what we need to do to fight terrorism and they know how to do it.

Getting it done in the face of overwhelming political correctness is quite another matter.

Even as the people were still being hauled off in ambulances or body bags and the British police were unequivocally naming it terrorism, the U.S. media was being careful not to lay it at the doorstep of radical Islamic terrorism.

Given the political state of this country at present that’s not all the media’s fault, but it is a sad commentary on how truly stupid we have become in the name of diversity and tolerance.

The U.S. has been dealing with the effects of a radical faction of Islam at least since 1993, the first time the World Trade Center was bombed. Apparently, we have been very slow learners in the ensuing 24 years, allowing the threat to multiply exponentially.

After the Manchester attack, British authorities announced that they know of 23,000 people supporting terrorism in the U.K. They place 3,000-3,500 of those in the active terrorist category, and the other 20,000 or so as terrorist sympathizers or supporters.

U.S. authorities admit to knowing of between 1500 and 5,000 people in the U.S. that are persons of interest. Some authorities privately place the figure at the high end of that range or even higher.

NO law enforcement agency can keep track of 23,000 or even 3000 bad guys every minute of every day.

The question is, why are they still wandering around freely in our countries in the first place?

The usual excuse is either that they can’t be proven to be in the active stages of planning and executing an attack, meaning there are no grounds for a warrant, or that they are being watched so they can be used to find even more bad guys.

A retired cop once said that the way to get control over a criminal chain of command is to keep shortening the chain. Eventually you’ll get to the hook end.

It sounds simple, but as is proven after every attack, it obviously isn’t an idea that has had many backers.

PC drivel aside, that certainly seemed to be where British Prime Minister Theresa May was going in her first public press appearance post-attack.

Her immediate approach was to make a broad call for tougher sentences for terror offenses, less tolerance of extremism, a rather strange call to hold online tech giants “to account” and regulating the internet to eliminate ” safe spaces for extremists”, and reinforcing British values.

(Sidebar: The tech companies don’t create jihadist messaging, jihadists do. In fact, the first place people often notice that someone they know is becoming radicalized is on social media. Further, the darknet is the real logistics home of terrorism. Perhaps outside the heat of the moment, PM May will elaborate more fully.)

Whatever her other differences with the President, on the issue of getting tough on terrorists, they seem to largely agree.

She stated quite unambiguously that the existence of, and tolerance for, so-called “no-go” zones had just come to a screeching halt. That point has been one of her party’s campaign issues for some months, but it took on a graphic and tragic new relevance Saturday night.

One of the points often brought up when someone says they want to “contain Islamic(ist) terrorism” is the issue of non-assimilation.

Islam, like Christianity, is composed of various sub-groups. The ones that seems to be causing most of the trouble are those that demand strict adherence to Sharia law.

Political combatants differ on the impact of Sharia law in supporting terrorism. Most non-Muslims don’t know anything about it, although various groups, including this 2013 article in the Huffington Post, attempt to present it in a simplified form that Westerners can understand.

Britain is home to an estimated 85 Sharia courts, or more properly tribunals, often represented as a form of Muslim civil court, according to the British paper, the Daily Mail. These courts are known to be extremely oppressive to women by Western standards, yet they are allowed to co-exist unfettered and side-by-side with British courts.

Objective students of the Muslim culture note that a deeper dive into the factions that that strictly follow Sharia will reveal that they are more likely to believe that the Koran demands that non-believers be eradicated from the face of the earth.

Leaving aside the actual framework of Sharia, the main objection to Sharia law in Western cultures is that it indicates that the communities that follow it to the letter do not accept the necessity of adopting Western values.

In short, it represents the epitome of non-assimilation. Sort of a canary in the coal mine for detecting people susceptible to joining extremist groups, if you will.

Which brings us full circle to the London Bridge event.

If British Prime Minister May’s party comes out on top of the upcoming election and can attain a majority, just how far will she be allowed go to contain people like the three that brought a whole new perspective to the nursery rhyme line “London Bridge is falling down?”

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